Someday, Someday, Maybe: A Novel by Lauren Graham

So, Lauren Graham (better known as Lorelai Gilmore) wrote a novel. I don’t know why it took me so long to find out about it. As soon as I did, I ordered it online, and finally read it.

If you haven’t heard about it yet – here’s a short summary:

Frances or Franny Banks is an aspiring actress that only has six months left of the three-year deadline she gave herself to succeed. It’s the mid-nineties and she lives in New York with her roommates Dan and Jane and works as a waitress to pay the bills. In order to further her career Franny attends an acting class every week and keeps a record of her appointments and schedule (not that there’s much to keep track of) in a Filofax. Her deadline is looming and she’s afraid that she might not succeed.

Answering machines and pay phones

The premise for the novel might seem like a cliché: A struggling actress working as a waitress in New York while she tries to catch her big break. But Graham tells the story in such a sincere and genuine way, through Filofax excerpts and answering machine messages, that it was interesting to get a behind the scenes look at what it meant to be an aspiring actress in the 1990s. It was a time without cellphones and emails. A time of answering machines and pay phones. Franny had to constantly check her messages from a pay phone to see if she’s been booked for an audition or wait for her lines to be faxed through to her. (Can you imagine?).

I really enjoyed Someday, Someday, Maybe. Franny is witty and funny and I couldn’t help but imagine Lauren Graham as Franny. Graham has said in an interview that the novel isn’t autobiographical but that she’s fictionalised some of her own experiences as an actress. Her accounts of attending auditions are well-written, humorous and insightful. Franny is very relatable as a character; she rambles when she’s nervous, she’s clumsy (to the point of falling on stage during a performance) and she often succumbs to self-doubt. In between meeting with agents, going on auditions, taking notes in her Filofax and trying to figure out what an eyelash curler is, Franny keeps believing that she’ll achieve success someday, someday, maybe.

If you’re in the mood for a fun, light-hearted read and if you’re a fan of Lauren Graham’s sense of humour you’ll love Someday, Someday, Maybe.